A Weekened of Ruffed Grouse Hunting

A Weekend of Hunting Grouse With Sean Gulden

Sean showed up late as usual, but he had to drive seven hours to get to my place. So we got a later start. We drove to a mountain 35 miles away to hunt Blue Grouse. Our party consisted of Sean, my oldest son, David, myself, and three German Shorthairs.

On our way to the lookout that we intended to hunt, we cut lion tracks and bear tracks in the road. When we got to the starting spot, it was 9:30 a.m., 70 degrees, and 7,000 feet in elevation.

Sean had never hunted grouse before, so we started with Blues. We chose to stay together for a while before splitting up, which produced a point from David’s dog, Whiskey, with Sean’s dog, Iris, and my dog Bones backing. We were still discussing the plan and no shots were fired.

From there, we split up. Sean and Iris hunted one finger ridge and David and I took Bones and Whiskey around the tree line. We didn’t go far before we heard shooting from Sean, which bagged him his first Blue. It wasn’t long before Whiskey and Bones were on point, but David and I missed.

After a bit, we met back up with Sean and took pictures of him and his bird; a big male Blue.

After resting, we split back up and David and I ended up 1500 feet below the pickup according to the GPS. So we made our way back up where we could rest. In the 2 ½ hours that we hunted off the mountain, we moved 30 to 40 birds, but only shot one.

After returning home and eating lunch, we headed out to one of my Ruffed Grouse spots, and some shade. This time, I took my dog Willy and Sean took Iris. David left Whiskey at home to rest.

It didn’t take long before we started to get into birds, resulting in five Ruffs with lots of points and backs. Even though it was getting toward evening, the temperature was still 91. It was just too hot. So, we bunched it for the day and spent the evening looking over deer hunting spots.

The next morning, we got up early and headed out to look at some more deer hunting spots, and brought along my dog Pepper and Iris again, so that when we were done we could make a quick hunt before Sean had to head back to Grants Pass.

After looking over deer ground, we hit a new spot of mine that is a big aspen thicket along a highway. It wasn’t two minutes out of the truck and Iris bumped two birds. Those were the only birds that morning, ending a great weekend with friends and family.